Q and A Update

The first question in the Q and A is from Marchy in Germany. His blog can be found at www.maerchy.blogspot.com (Germany only). Perhaps he can also recommend some good German beers to us as well.

Question: How do you handle players who minbet (1/4 to 1/3 of the pot about) 90% of the flops?
At the moment i play the 33s on FullTilt and there are lots of these guys. I just cant stand
them because i really dont know what the best strategy is against them.

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This is a very good question. This is something I struggled with early on in my husng progression and I'm sure many others have or do struggle with as well.

There are a few things I like to keep in mind when dealing with min bettors:

1) We're usually dealing with a very wide range of hands, so we should not try to narrow their hand range down based on actions that do not warrant it.

2) Our odds of calling a min bet on the flop are much greater than on the turn, therefore we'll probably be calling a lot more often on the flop and we shouldn't be worried about folding turns.

3) We want to be careful about getting overzealous about raising them too often in small pots and folding to the min bet too often in bigger pots.

Keeping those points in mind, here are a few things I like to do against min bettors:

- Figuring out if they will min bet 3 streets with strong hands (top pairs+), good draws (flush draws, OESDs, weaker pair combo draws), weak draws (low flush draws, gutshot straights, overcards) and outright "bluffs" (weak hands that need runner runner to beat most hands that will play a big pot).

If they are not following the same betting pattern with all of these hands, then I want to try to find out which hands that they are deviating from their min bet strategy with and what they are doing instead.

- I want to also figure out how they react to a raise. I generally want to raise a stronger hand first, because most min bettors are going to be too loose and call with a lot of hands they should not on the flop, at least in the early portion of our match. If I notice a fold I'll try again, perhaps with an outright bluff or semi bluff, if they fold again I start to see they are weak and will throw in a good amount of bluff raises along with semi bluff and strong hands and wait until they adjust.

While I may not always get action on my strong hands, the raises are most likely going to frustrate the player.

- It might not be too difficult to win when you are hitting cards/boards vs these players, but what about when you are card dead and the boards just aren't hitting your starting hands?

In these cases, you really have to pay attention to how you are playing your high cards, how often you are chasing without the correct odds and other decisions you make in marginal/close spots.

If a player is going to min bet every street with any hand, it's going to be correct to call down with a hand like A high. If you notice he is starting to check hands that are really weak or that have no showdown value, you're going to want to adjust and starting folding high cards to his bets.

A few things you'll want to avoid are bluffing off a lot of chips because "I haven't bet big in awhile, he has to respect me here" or "he bets every street, he can't call a few raises from me."

Be careful on taking raises too far. If you bluff raise his min bet on the flop and he calls, be weary about following through on the turn. Don't blindly spew chips against these players, that is how they are going to win because they usually don't get enough value out of their bigger hands and end up letting you build pots when you want with stronger hands.

A few other lesser points that I want to make about playing min bettors:

- Don't over or under raise them. For example, if they bet 30 into a 200 pot on the turn, raising your weak top pair to 400 is going to be an over raise. On the flip side, raising 3x to 90 is going to probably be an under raise. Often times against constant min bettors, I almost "ignore" their small bet and just raise them to what I would bet if they had checked. In this case it would be a 130-160 type turn bet (raise) that I would make.

- Like I said earlier, be aware of the odds you are being offered compared to their presumably very wide range of hands. You also want to be aware of the odds you are offering them. If their drawing hands are 20-25% likely to hit the river, you don't want to "keep them in the pot" with an under raise that offers them the correct odds to draw. They will likely make the mistake of calling without odds, so don't be too worried about pushing them out of the pot with a 4-5x raise. In fact, your raises will often be over 4x the bet against min bettors.

In conclusion, since this is a player and situations you're probably not dealing with on a regular basis, you might have to think a little longer/harder when facing the min bettor. While I gave a lot of general advice, you should find enough above to effectively combat the min bettor and to get you thinking in the right direction against almost all of them.

I'd say above all, awareness is key against these players, and the most common mistake is a lack of discipline and emotional control when dealing with these players. The same can go for the opposite end of the spectrum, the aggro-maniacs, though it is not just a simple "take this advice but apply it in the opposite direction." That, however, is another day and another blog post.

Let me know if this helped you or if you agree/disagree with my advice. Also, feel free to send more questions to me, ryan.ryryp13@gmail.com